The Mcneal Perspective: Newsradio's Most Lovable Egomaniac
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The McNeal Perspective: NewsRadio's Most Lovable Egomaniac by Jean-Luc Renault May 7, 2009 The McNeal Perspective – Jean-Luc Renault 2 Abstract NewsRadio's Bill McNeal is a pompous, overpaid, coddled and self-absorbed radio anchor who manipulates his co-workers into doing what he wants them to do. He has little work ethic compared with other members of the station's staff, but receives the highest salary. He is also inept at writing stories and editorials and relies on others to do that for him. The few times he tries to write his own editorials, they are in poor taste, ill informed or just downright idiotic. In short, he lives up to what NewsRadio's viewers might expect from a fictional news anchor. McNeal is a radio host, but his behavior is best explained by looking at fictional television anchors because he displays many of the same characteristics. McNeal differs from other anchors in film and television because his raging egomania is an obvious mask for many latent psychological wounds inflicted during his traumatic upbringing. The McNeal Perspective – Jean-Luc Renault 3 Introduction Bill McNeal, played by Phil Hartman, is more than just the host of the fictional WNYX-AM 580 on the NBC sitcom NewsRadio. He's also a stereotype of the pompous broadcast journalist who cares more about himself than anything else in the world. Although he is a radio anchor, McNeal is modeled on other fictional television news anchors in that he receives the station's highest salary, does the least amount of work and has an ego twice the size of the New York City skyscraper where the station is located. But where other fictional news anchors are somewhat one-dimensional, McNeal has a hidden side shredded with emotional scars from his painful upbringing. Throughout the four seasons he serves as host, it becomes obvious that McNeal's overblown exterior is his way of covering up his traumatic past. Not that anyone is expected to feel sorry for him--the extremes of McNeal's raging egomania combined with his damaged psyche actually counter each other. Once viewers start to feel sorry for him, he goes into a self- serving tirade that blocks any pity that might be coming his way. Still, he is very likable, and even the staff he torments for years still care about him. After Hartman was killed in real life between the fourth and fifth seasons, McNeal dies suddenly of a heart attack and is mourned by the staff during the first show of the fifth and final season.1 The McNeal Perspective – Jean-Luc Renault 4 Bill McNeal McNeal was born on March 1, 1950.2 McNeal, whose real name is Evelyn and pronounced Eve-elyn, had a complicated childhood that left him with crippling emotional disorders he hides under his bloated ego.3 Regardless, McNeal still recounts these painful moments as though they were treasured family memories, full of "love and nurture" and "good-natured ribbing."4 "I remember one time," reminisces McNeal, "my father came home from a night on the town, which of course had turned into a week, and my mother said, 'John, is there anything you won't drink?' And my father shot back, 'Poison! I'm saving it for you!"5 McNeal often concludes such disturbing stories by laughing nervously and slowly exhaling the phrase, "Ah, good times." His mother was equally distant. McNeal says he likes to eat the old sandwiches in the station's vending machine because they remind him of the ones his mother used to make. "She'd make a month's worth at a time and leave them for me in a box on the porch. She was quite a woman."6 When McNeal's mother was around, she wasn't very supportive. McNeal was cut from the high school football team, which prompted his mother to announce in front of his peers that "Central's lost a fullback, but the McNeals have gained a daughter."7 The McNeal Perspective – Jean-Luc Renault 5 McNeal also had trouble growing up with his now-alcoholic brother. Despite the fond manner in which McNeal talks about his brother's sadistic behavior, the stories he tells are shockingly, yet laughingly, disturbing. One time he was mouthing off to his brother, who then punched him so hard he was knocked out for a half hour. "When I woke up I was on the bus, completely nude, of course."8 During one family Christmas, his brother again stripped McNeal naked and locked him outside just as carolers were arriving. "Talk about a Merry Christmas!" laughs Bill, followed by "Ah, good times."9 McNeal got his first taste of radio when he hosted a rock-music show from midnight to 6 a.m. at the University of Cincinnati, where he was the self-described "bad boy of WFIB."10 McNeal reveals that spent most of his college days and nights drunk and goofing off. After justifying why hazing is a good thing, McNeal pours coffee and hot sauce on an intern's head as he remembers a story from his fraternity days. McNeal laughs about the time he and his frat brothers got a pledge drunk, locked him in a car trunk and left him at a junkyard. When McNeal's boss asks him how the pledge got out of the trunk, McNeal says he has to leave.11 While trying to write his autobiography, McNeal laments that Dan Rather was the youngest AP photographer at age 19. McNeal's news director, Dave Nelson, asks what he was doing at 19. "Drinking," retorts McNeal. 12 Later in the same episode, McNeal recounts his memories of the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. He would have been about 18. He says he witnessed the riots from his dorm-room TV while drinking.13 The McNeal Perspective – Jean-Luc Renault 6 In fact, McNeal owes his professional career to his alcohol abuse. He actually says radio is boring and that he only got a job in the business because his aunt owned a radio station. "She only hired me to try to get me to stop drinking," he says.14 In his professional life, McNeal is best known, or at least he thinks he is, as the golden-voiced anchor of New York City's second-ranked news radio station. He loves smoking cigarettes almost more than anything, and often says he's most relaxed while not wearing pants. He's even done both at the same time while in the office.15 Despite a review that once called him “adequate,” McNeal has an excellent voice.16 That’s probably why he is allowed to keep his job despite being otherwise inept as a journalist. He sounds and acts like a television news anchor, but he could never make the switch because he looks terrible on camera.17 While McNeal mostly reads what’s handed to him, he occasionally writes his own editorials in such segments as “The McNeal Perspective” and “The Real Deal With Bill McNeal.” McNeal never writes a decent editorial, as his segments are often poorly constructed and lead to unintended consequences. During one “McNeal Perspective,” the host chides another radio station for using the word penis because he says it is offensive. He even suggests whoever says the word penis on the air should be punished regardless of the context, not realizing that he is saying the word repeatedly on the air.18 During one of his later “Real Deal With Bill McNeal” segments, he says that foreign diplomats who don’t have to pay parking tickets “should be dragged from their cars and beaten.” After that actually happens, he pens another editorial saying that the only person who should be beaten is “Joe Vigilante,” who, as it turns out, is a real person who ends up in the hospital.19 The McNeal Perspective – Jean-Luc Renault 7 McNeal often tells strangers that they probably recognize his voice from the show, but they never do. Not even the security guards in the lobby of the station's building know who he is, despite the fact they know everyone else in the office.20 That doesn't mean McNeal doesn't have his share of admirers. In one episode, he fears for his life because he thinks he is being stalked. It turns out to be a worker from the coffee shop across the street who merely wants McNeal's autograph.21 A few months later, a psychotic Santa Claus tells McNeal he's going to kill him, but later says it was just a ruse to get the anchor's attention because the Santa is actually an audition-tape-wielding journalism student. As it turns out, his tape contains a threatening message to McNeal after all.22 Co-worker and reporter Matthew Brock also has a long-running infatuation with McNeal, who returns Brock's admiration with nothing but insults. McNeal likes to think of himself as a smooth-talking ladies man. But he's seen dating only one woman, and she thinks he's British because he spoke in a fake accent when she met him at a party. He's afraid she won't like him if she finds out he's really not British, so he keeps it up, even when she comes to visit the office and meets the staff. 23 McNeal's biggest brush with fame comes when he repeatedly impersonates President Bill Clinton on the air. The fake interviews become such a hit that McNeal is greeted in the street by strangers wanting to shake his hand.